This paper will focus on how organizations can use social business practices and capabilities to transform themselves, and create competitive advantage and substantial new value.

A social business is an organization whose culture and systems encourage networks of people to create business value.

Exactly how are organizations transforming these processes and becoming social businesses? What best practices have emerged? Those questions are addressed by the Social Business Patterns in this whitepaper.Download it here.

The IBM Social Business FastTrack solutions each include a well defined services process and custom built, single environment, social software installation on VMware. These solutions are delivered by IBM

Software Services for Collaboration production-ready and typically within a week.

Remove implementation barriersThese solutions are designed to remove technical implementation barriers and put you on the fast track to becoming a social business with the lowest cost, lowest complexity, and fastest deployment methodspossible. Take advantage of your IBM collaboration software with an ultra-rapid deployment via a series of customized, pre-built VMware images. By significantly reducing the implementation time yourorganization can quickly unlock the business value of IBM social software.

The best value and lowest riskThe Collaboration Services mission is to deliver the experience you need to get the highest possible return on investment with the lowest risk to your business as possible. The experts from Collaboration Services work with thousands of collaboration software clients around the world, helping them achieve quantifiable business results. By providing these FastTrack solutions Collaboration Services is able to deliver these results to your organization in record time.

A social business embraces and cultivates a spirit of collaboration and community – internally and externally – delivering unprecedented return for the time invested.

FastTrack solutions availableQuickly and easily connect teams, customers, and partners and provide effective tools for knowledge exchange and communications. Each solution includes the required IBM application and database servers and can be integrated with your existing LDAP directory. Several FastTrack solutions are available based on your business needs:

IBM® Connections FastTrackTake advantage of any combination of the IBM® Connections capabilities, including Files, Profiles, Blogs, Wikis and more, to connect and collaborate with your professional network.

IBM Sametime® FastTrackUtilize any combination of the IBM Sametime® capabilities, including instant messaging, online meetings, video conferencing and more, to take action across your organization.

IBM Collaboration Center FastTrackAn integrated solution can be delivered with any combination of the following products:

Extension of IBM Software Accelerated Value Program smoothes operation of social technologies

"One great benefit of the program is that the Accelerated Value Leader
provides a rapid route into the IBM organization, helping us quickly
find the appropriate person to assist us with issues and questions
around our portal installation." - Anette Andreasson, Head of IT
(Domino), City of Gothenburg

With all the buzz around Exceptional Web Experience this week, we wanted to share with you how Collaboration Services can help make a socially engaging web experience a reality for your organization. In addition to our existing capabilities for IBM WebSphere Portal and related software products, we are bringing three new solutions to market to help you design, implement, and realize your own Exceptional Web Experience.

IBM Connections QuickStart for IBM WebSphere Portal

Take advantage of the new, no-cost entitlement to Connections Files and Profiles, allowing you to quickly integrate the power of social collaboration within your existing WebSphere Portal environment.

Developing a Roadmap to an Exceptional Web Experience

Develop and plan an Exceptional Web Experience, by exploring 'the art of the possible' with us to create innovative user experience solutions that solve real problems.

Delivering an Exceptional Web Experience

Deliver an Exceptional Web Experience by integrating and implementing IBM collaboration software to realize the power and business value of a next-generation social collaboration web experience.

We would love to hear from you regarding these new services capabilities! Please leave a comment below or contact us at issc@us.ibm.com for more information.

Here is a quick overview of some of the existing capabilities for IBM WebSphere Portal and related software products from our three teams within IBM Software Services for Collaboration.